A great view from the South Llano `front porch'

Published 5:30 am, Friday, April 10, 2009

Golden-fronted woodpecker and a variety of other birds can be found in the wooded areas at South Llano River State Park.

Golden-fronted woodpecker and a variety of other birds can be found in the wooded areas at South Llano River State Park.

Photo: Kathy Adams Clark

A great view from the South Llano `front porch'

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South Llano River State Park is found in a pastoral valley about four miles west of Junction, a town fittingly referred to as the “front porch of the West.”

Keeping to the metaphor of a front porch, I’d call the 524-acre state park a spacious and scenic front lawn. It’s a place I like to stretch out, relax, wander around and enjoy the trees, grasses, wildflowers and birds along the clean blue water of the river.

When driving into the park along Park Road 73, I slow down to a crawl so that I may fully enjoy my descent into a river valley of trees and grasslands. The road passes through a low-water crossing at the bottom of the valley where the turbulent stream on one side of the road suddenly becomes placid on the other side. Swimmers don’t care which side they jump into.

But I’m always after birds and wildlife, and I’m never disappointed. At the Park Headquarters — a 1920s-style, white building — purple martins circle overhead near their martin house this time of year and wild turkeys roost in the trees, sauntering onto the grassland during early mornings and late afternoons.

The turkeys are the Rio Grande subspecies of wild turkeys common in the south central Plains states and northeastern Mexico. The turkey roost at the park is one of the oldest roosts in Texas.

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Other fascinating birds abound in the park, such as the stunningly attractive vermilion flycatcher, a crimson-bodied, sleek-looking bird with coal-black wings. The bird darts into the air from its perches on fences or tree branches to snatch flying insects, then settles peacefully and elegantly back on its perch.

Spring brings migratory songbirds from the tropics to rest and feed in the park before they head farther north to breed. Nashville warblers, yellow warblers and Wilson’s warblers commonly migrate through, but a warbler called a yellow-breasted chat actually comes to the park to breed.

Yet I never take for granted the resident birds, including the golden-fronted and ladder-backed woodpeckers scurrying around tree trunks, western scrub-jays calling raucously from the shrubs and common ravens soaring like dark gliders overhead.

At the end of the day, I’ll pitch my tent and watch white-tailed deer feed on the grass as I cook dinner on my little camp stove. Maybe a cottontail rabbit will poke around the ground, certainly an armadillo will, and as the evening comes, a family of strange-looking mammals called javelinas will nose past my campfire.